I've never really
cared for villains who are just evil for evil's sake -- the kind of
1980's Saturday morning cartoon villains who do bad things simply
because they're evil and have no other reason -- Skeletor, Cobra,
the Decepticons, etc. This is why I've always tried to make my
villains a little bit more believable, with motives that make sense
-- to them at least, if nobody else. There is always the question of
how much they really believe their own rhetoric versus how much it's
just something they tell themselves and others to justify their
wanton greed and a lust for power; but ultimately, even the worst
people in history never thought of themselves as evil. And neither
do my villains.

Before it became
defunct, somebody on my old forum raised the question of why
Horatio still works for the Empire, when he obviously doesn't
believe in their brand of fundamentalism. Incidentally, I had been
planning on addressing that very question for a long time already,
and so here it is at last.